It was an evening when most people like lazing at home in front of the television set with some music playing in the background or eating out at a nice restaurant or be engaged in some other fun activity. A room on the first floor of Seagull Bookstores was full of people who were not engaged in any of these. The room, in fact was packed. There were people sitting on the floor, standing by the sides and others were peeping into the room from doors that led to other rooms. What were they doing? Was a celebrity in the room and the object of so much interest? The answer, surprisingly, is NO.

It was a seminar at the Seagull in Kolkata that revolved around a book, or rather anthology from Seagull Publications, The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexuality in Contemporary India, contributed by a number of people, about contemporary India and her diverse sexualities.

The book has been edited by Brinda Bose and Subhabrata Bhattacharya. The people on the panel were discussing what it means in India not to be a heterosexual, how they live in, the harsh and unforgiving society and about what the third gender is all about..

From school and college students, to lecturers in college, school activists, writers, researchers and many other kinds of people, regardless of their sexual orientations, everyone in the room and outside it, were listening with rapt attention to the different speakers.

The atmosphere was congenial, friendly and informal. There was an air of acceptance, of tolerance and interest on the issues being discussed. It was hard to imagine that it is this same country, of which the people in the room are part that discourages homosexuality to the extent that it is considered a crime, one that you can be locked up for. Ronjita Biswas, psychiatrist and founder member of Sappho, an NGO that protects the rights of LGB people, is one of the contributors in the book. “As therapist working with Sappho, she felt women with same sex orientations needed to find a safe space, without the fear of stigma. Most of those who came to us had been traumatised, marginalised in their family, workspace, neighbourhood. The lesbian has to be brought back into the mainstream. Though their problems might not be pathological, they are distressed."

Sohini Ghosh, a Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University spoke about issues of sexuality in Indian film and the gradual change in the way people with same sex preferences are being portrayed in Indian cinema. To illustrate her point, she showed the audience clips from some recent films like Girlfriend and Men Not Allowed, which veer towards soft porn. “There is a burgeoning interest in people wanting to know differently sexual people," she said, as a clip from a documentary called Between the Lines, about Mumbai's 'Hijras' was shown.

We can only wait to see when this curiosity about LGB people transforms into acceptance of them into mainstream society.

Isha Majumder

BA (Journo, Psy & Eng)